I've done that successfully for a short while before moving to the convenience of a proper HW.
After writing the latest Tails OS onto the USB stick it's all good, no need to look for "what was the CD"? Or at least for me that was it all.


  and here comes the difference. While I do have plenty of spare USB sticks, I literally have no old laptop for this. My oldest laptop (12 years old) got a RAM update and was used lately by my kids even for online school.


LOL!
Those who don't read the very basics do deserve their fate though...


I've read about the fake ledgers on bitcointalk. I don't think though that general purpose development devices like this worth such an attack, since the vast majority will not be used as HW.


Imho the more the variety to choose from, the better. I expect Jade be less easy to buy than this M5StickV in some countries.

Then I guess that I've done it wrong? 
I started with Reddit, although it was /r/dogecoin (where I was disappinted by their algo to bury older topics). Then I came to Bitcointalk and I'm still here.
I do check twitter when I'm bored, but not much, since I find it more a place for shilling and shouting than discussing ideas; so I can't really say that Twitter has a chance to "get me".

ETF is no longer wow and the laws related to usage of crypto by common people may not be much related to ETF (companies), hence I am rather afraid to hope too much yet in that area.
Bitcoin recognized as currency in US would be a very big step. I think that they'll delay it for now, since the implications are... big. And far beyond US.

So (back to OP), we will probably still see it as commodity for a while...

Then this becomes interesting... Also the ideas that Ukrainian politicians own big amounts of crypto gives all this a better weight.
It worth keeping an eye on it then and see how it'll go. September 2021 is not that far away, so it's a (impressingly) rather tight schedule too. Wow.

Jack Dorsey is simply pushing his main investments - Twitter and Bitcoin -, I see nothing odd here.
He believes in both hence he has his money in both.
He tells it loudly since it's in his own interest too.
Making them work together was just a new step in a direction that's basically expected.

It's clearly good news. But I would not just open a champagne because of that 

It's not even needed to have an old notebook. An USB stick with Tails OS and a few reboots actually can do all you need for pretty much all the safety you need and an easy to use cold storage.
But some do prefer the convenience of HW, some do prefer to use it together with their smartphone, ... and this kind of setup may be OK for them.

And those devices can have their own "hidden" internet only if they get connected through wires (which you should clearly not do) or you enter there your WiFi password (which would be even more stupid to do).

I find this as a politician-type announcement that rises your hopes, but doesn't actually tell anything.
He doesn't tell what they want to do good, he doesn't tell what will be that leading thing they'll do, no time frame, nothing.
For now it would be safer to have no expectations at all from that announcement.

Many were tricked into "wanting" that. Clearly US and Russia too wanted a weaker EU and they've got it.
Both EU and UK will have more troubles than benefits from this, although on the long term it may end up as UK back into EU as a proper member (not a special one like before) and maybe with metric system too (for easier transfer of goods). But it will be painful until that is reached and we may have also troubles with (at least) Northern Ireland in the process.
COVID and non-EU borders are already visible for the lack of cheap workers to harvest UK crops, I've just read today in the news...

From what I know Tesla was doing some accountancy tricks (handle like they'd buy crypto from you) to accept bitcoin payments, so you probably have to pay tax for the fiat gains there.

But as long as more and more companies accept crypto as payment (whether directly or through payment processors who give them fiat), I would expect FED/IRS come to their senses and see crypto as money. I don't know though if this will happen sooner or rather later. El Salvador (and others to come) should also leave FED/IRS out of possible schemes that deprives crypto from it rightful place in the economy.

Since a big chunk of transactions is made by traders, trading bots, arbitrage bots, ... and since the market was not appealing for some while, yes, the number of on-chain transactions is small.
The fact that the hash rate is recovering also means that the transactions are processed fast enough.
And the result is that lately the blocks are mined without being full with transactions (the mempool is also basically empty).

I guess that this situation won't last long, hence best is to take advantage of the low fees and consolidate your small inputs if needed.



BestChange is an aggregator containing many crypto exchanges with many means of payment. They have an active signature campaign here, meaning that they pay people to advertise them.

O, clearly. That was part of doing it good. But I have a feeling that's more than that.
But time will tell - whether they do any real step before or after the FED.

I think that it was about not being available (no way to buy it, no resellers, nothing), not straight banned.
There was a thread from a guy (iirc he was from Arabia somewhere) who had this issue and wanted a solution.

The problem is that a HW I would not buy from just anybody. It has to be the producer or a certified reseller.
On the other hand, this hind of hardware may be safe since you flash it yourself with the software you probably check first.


Indeed, AliExpress has its share of M5Stack sellers, so it's most probably from China.

>>>
And while it's not a HW per se, it's actually a development kit, like RasPi or Arduino, it seems to have all you need to build something with HW capabilities off it.

Clearly. Just the change of optics from such a company, such a pillar of the banking system, is imho a huge step forward in Bitcoin gaining legitimacy exactly between the old style banking dinosaurs. And if they want a share of the profits, they'll have to stop the idiotic rhetoric less and less people believe and start following the trend (i.e. join us and no longer fight us).

And I don't expect that the interaction between crypto world and banking system can go forward without more regulations/legislation. I don't know how good/bad will they be, some signals from EU are quite concerning for example, but well... we cannot simply expect that the old system will give up easily, right?

Oamenii astia habar n-au ce-i aia crypto. Aud si ei una-alta si incearca sa faca ceva.
Din ceea ce vad eu, situatia e cam asa: politicienii au - intr-un fel sau altul - consilieri cu care discuta asemenea chestii. Aia ar trebui sa fie specialisti. Na, daca aceia incep sa inteleaga crypto pe bune, cam devin pro crypto Deci e cam normal ca actualii lor consilieri sa nu inteleaga crypto, si de aici confuzia grosolana legata de portofele.
Chiar sunt curios ce vor face in legatura cu portofelele care nu sunt centralizate/in custodia unor firme.

Pe de alta parte imi e cam teama pentru viitorul Monero... 

If one receives cash for charity, there's a huge chance that the money has drug traces on it.
With Bitcoin the problem is rather similar: hacked money can get to you, sooner or later, but, as already said, most probably it will be mixed first.
Expecting to get only "clean" coins is like expecting to use only freshly printed dollars in all your life.

Of course, if you receive directly hacked/stolen money, you'd better report it and let the authorities take over. They may have access to specialists and tools to actually do something (depending on the country of those authorities though)

You cannot block money to reach you, but you can use coin control and don't spend that input.

Since Ledger/Trezor is not available in certain countries or there could be trust issues there, with this kind of setup you should be basically risk free.
Although indeed that warning is somewhat concerning... (I'm not sure what are the actual risks though if one did save the seed properly; are there any?!)

I don't have all I need to test it now, but... does Electrum on Tails work on ToR or on clearnet? Because if it's on ToR you can take a look on where it connects to.

If he would be indeed pessimistic and that for real, he would most probably no longer be here. And if he would be serious, and take himself serious, I guess that this kind of posts would not be possible:  

---

Yeah, the duck was rather sour and was taking himself (far too) serious. He was meaning every word and was concerned that people will basically lose everything if investing into Bitcoin.

This question doesn't really make sense on a bitcoin forum, isn't it?


Maybe, but not much.
There's a problem with lack of legislation in many countries for bitcoin.
There's a problem with banks and central banks being wary and issuing warnings about bitcoin (or even ban it in certain countries).
There's a problem with influential people telling that bitcoin is bad.
There's a problem with the big variations in bitcoin price, making it not suitable for everybody to invest.



You can't do that with your change. Exchange fees, withdrawal fees, ... they're too big and you will end up with nothing. So this use case is not feasible.

I don't know if it's about strength or is it more about staying in the game. With all the big financial powers going on the direction of CBDCs, EU had to do the same.
It's interesting that they take their time in analyzing fully all the possible implications. It means that they want to do it good (whatever that means from their point of view!) and it also means that while they signaled that they stay in the game, they don't want to be the first, they don't want unnecessary headaches, but if the others do it, they'll do it too.